Abstract
Successful software engineering requires experience and acknowledgment of complexity, including that which leads designers to recognize ambiguity within the software design description itself. We report on a study of 21 post-secondary institutions from the USA, UK, Sweden, and New Zealand. First competency and graduating students as well as educators were asked to perform a software design task. We found that graduating seniors were more likely to recognize ambiguities in under-specified problems than first competency students. Additionally, participants who addressed all requirements in the design were more likely than others to recognize ambiguities in the design specification. The behavior of recognizing ambiguity and gathering information appear to be independent of past performance, as measured by course grades.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Adams, R.S., Turns, J., Atman, C.J.: What Could Design Learning Look Like? In: Expertise in Design: Design Thinking Research Symposium 6, Sydney, Australia (2003)
Boehm, B.W.: Software Engineering Economics. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River (1981)
Brown, D.A.: Requiring CS1 student to write requirements specifications: A rationale, implementation suggestions, and a case study. In: Proceedings of the 19th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, pp. 13–16 (1988)
Bursic, K.M., Atman, C.J.: Information Gathering: A Critical Step for Quality in the Design Process. Quality Management Journal 4(4), 60–75 (1997)
Fincher, S., Petre, M., Tenenberg, J., Blaha, K., Bouvier, D., et al.: Cause for alarm?: A multi-national, multi-institutional study of student-generated software designs. Technical Report 16-04, Computing Laboratory, University of Kent, Canterbury (September 2004), http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/2004/1953
Fincher, S., Petre, M., Tenenberg, J., et al.: A multi-national, multi-institutional study of student-generated software designs. In: Proceedings of the 4th Annual Finnish / Baltic Sea Conference on Computer Science Education (2004)
Gause, D., Weinberg, G.: Are Your Lights On? Winthrop Publishers, Cambridge (1982)
Guindon, R., Krasner, H., Curtis, B.: Breakdowns and processes during early activities of software design by professionals. In: Empirical Studies of Programmers: Second Workshop (1987)
Hilburn, T.: Inspections of formal specifications. In: Proceedings of the 27th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, pp. 150–154 (1996)
Jeffries, R., Turner, A.A., Polson, P.G., Atwood, M.E.: The processes involved in designing software, Cognitive Skills and Their Acquisition. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah (1981)
McCracken, W.M., et al.: A multi-national, multi-institutional study of assessment of programming skills of first-year CS students. SIGCSE Bulletin 33(4), 125–180 (2001)
Soloway, E., Ehrlich, K.: Empirical studies of programming knowledge. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 10(5), 595–609 (1984)
Tenenberg, J., et al.: A multi-national, multi-institutional study of student-generated software designs. Informatics in Education 4(1), 143–162 (2005)
Wiedenbeck, S.: Novice/expert differences in programming skills. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 23, 383–390 (1985)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
VanDeGrift, T., Simon, B., Sanders, D., Blaha, K. (2006). Do Students Recognize Ambiguity in Software Specifications? A Multi-national, Multi-institutional Report. In: Inverardi, P., Jazayeri, M. (eds) Software Engineering Education in the Modern Age. ICSE 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4309. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11949374_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11949374_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-68203-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68204-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)